


Photography Class

by writingonpostcards



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingonpostcards/pseuds/writingonpostcards
Summary: Jack notices the boy straight away. Blonde, freckled, blushing, and only two rows in front of him.
 Jack and Bitty share a class. Jack flirts through photographs.





	

Jack notices the boy straight away. Blonde, freckled, blushing, and only two rows in front of him. Even though he thinks he probably wouldn’t be questioned if he turns his camera on to take a photo—he _is_ in a photography class—he doesn’t make a move to.

Instead he just watches as the boy takes notes, asks a question once, and laughs when the teacher tell a joke.

Jack accidentally makes eye-contact with him as the boy exits down the aisle after class. He gets a quick smile. It’s enough to flush his body with tingling heat.

He gathers his own bare notebook—pen left capped all of class—and follows the boy at a distance as he walks to his next class. Jack doubles back when the blonde stops at a locker on the way, opening it up and switching textbooks.

Jack waits until he’s gone and then goes over to the locker. Number 0015. He’s never bothered with one himself. It’s metal, a few feet tall. There’s a gap down the side where you could easily fit a note, a photograph, a newspaper clipping, the stem of a flower if you’re happy with it hanging out.

He realises he’s standing there staring at a locker, at some boy’s locker.

He looks around but doesn’t think anyone’s noticed him. He hurries to his next class, only a few minutes late.

He takes the long way back to his room, passing by the pond and up around the skating rink. His camera is on and Jack stops every now and then to take a photo. The group of geese that are always around, the sky through a tree’s canopy, the afternoon sun reflected through Faber’s massive glass windows.

He puts them on his computer straight away. Something about the colouring of his last photo reminds him of the boy in class. He prints it out.

It’s in his bag with him all through the next day, and the following, and the day after that when he’s back at the class he shares with the blonde boy.

He follows him out again, less careful than before. Tempting fate and telling himself that if he’s noticed he’ll do something about what he’s feeling, ask the boy out. Or maybe just introduce himself. Start with that.

The blonde boy goes to his locker again and takes a long time to change over his books. He looks agitated with something. Jack frowns. He doesn’t think this boy should feel that way.

After the boy is gone he takes the picture from his backpack and walks over to his locker. He slots it through the gap on the side and walks away with a smile, nodding to himself. That should give the boy something to smile about.

Jack misses the blonde boy discovering his photo, but the next time he’s in class, he can see it peeking out from the back of the boy’s exercise book. It makes Jack feel appreciated, even though the boy doesn’t know it’s from him. At the end of class, he watches the boy flip to the back of his book to look over the picture. He traces around the edge and then closes the book with a smile.

Jack catches his eye deliberately this time, offering his own smile which the boy returns. He doesn’t want to seem overeager, so Jack turns away when his smile grows. So big and wide his cheeks hurt. He tells himself to put it away but then decides to let himself feel giddy about the boy keeping his photo. It’s fine.

He’s passes the boy’s locker the next day, not with any purpose, but because he seems to have folded it into his routine now. There’s something stuck to the outside of it. It’s a polaroid.

Jack looks around but he’s the only one in the corridor. He steps closer to the locker and takes a look.

The polaroid is of Faber.

Jack reaches out to peel it off the locker. It’s Faber in the morning, with the sun just hitting the edge of the building.

Jack’s heart flips. This _little bit_ of communication, and his heart flips.

Jack pins the polaroid to the corkboard in his room as soon as he gets back. He stares at it for far too long. Then he sets an alarm.

He wakes up before the sun, puts on his running gear, and slings his camera across his chest.

He makes it to Faber just as the light is hitting the building like in the polaroid. His heart is pumping so fast and he thinks if he held his hand out in front of him it’d be shaking. He looks around, trying to spot a blond head somewhere, anywhere.

He can’t see anyone.

He stays until the sun is fully up and his stomach is begging him for food.

Jack returns home, dejected. He’d been so sure that the photo had been a message. _Meet me here_. Apparently not.

Jack wonders if maybe he should stop thinking about the boy in his class. Maybe he’s building everything up in his head. After all, the boy doesn’t know he’s the one who pushed the photo through his locker. Doesn’t really know Jack at all. They share a class but they’ve never shared a conversation.

Jack thinks it over, about whether he’ll keep trying or not. He watches the boy in class some more, sees how engaged he is, and polite, encouraging, how he keeps getting more and more attractive in Jack’s eyes.

Jack wants to try.

He takes more photos, and delivers them in sets, trying to put himself into them as much as he can without showing his face.

He takes a series of his morning run.

He takes a series of the geese.

He takes his camera to a practice and gets lots of shots of the ice and the stands and his skates.

He takes photos of the sunset. Of rain against his bedroom window. Of a lit candle on his desk during a blackout.

They’re not even, some of them, very good. The framing is wrong and the lighting is terrible, or there’s a lens flair, or it focussed on something in the background instead of the foreground. But Jack puts them in anyway. He’s not perfect, he doesn’t see himself that way, so why should his photos show that?

Jack thinks he made the right choice to try because he keeps getting polaroids back.

The entire process of a pie being baked.

A bookshelf mixed with textbooks and cookbooks.

A photo of an ipod playing a mixtape, held in front of a Beyoncé poster.

There’s a series of photos from inside Faber too. Skates, patterns shaved out on the ice, the sunrise from inside Faber.

It’s been nearly two months of exchanging photos. Jack smiles more at the boy – Eric Bittle, he’s found out – and they’ve even had a short conversation. Jack spends nights imagining telling Eric, and what will happen. He imagines taking Eric out to Annie’s for coffee and he imagines being able to photograph Eric like he wanted to that first day.

Jack is nervous though. So nervous. Because he’s been doing this all knowing that it’s Eric. And Eric has no idea that it’s him. Will it sound wrong to Eric, once Jack tells him?

In the end, the decision is taken out of Jack’s hands.

There’s thee polaroids stuck to the locker.

Another picture of Faber, but it’s not the big, beautiful windows, or the couches in the foyer, or the steps out front. [It’s the small back entrance, near the carpark, with the single door and too few streetlights](http://67.media.tumblr.com/9ef017ecf3bff2b745104ad080322eef/tumblr_my3ssabDOw1szaospo2_1280.jpg).

The second picture is of several clocks on a table, all set to seven.

The third is a picture of a travel coffee cup with a date and a question mark scrawled on it in marker.

Eric wants to meet him.

The date is for tomorrow which Jack is grateful for. There’s almost no time to worry about what Eric is going to do when Jack reveals himself to him. Jack still manages to fit in some worrying, but mostly he’s feeling excited. Whatever happens tomorrow is going to bring the photo exchange to its peak. It’s end. But Jack’s hoping it’ll just be the start of something else.

Jack wakes up before his alarm, after not getting much sleep, tossing and turning, imagining what’s about to happen.

He dresses well. Nice jeans and a button-up shirt as opposed to a t-shirt. He takes his camera. While fitting the lens on he realises, oh, he’s shaking. But it’s not nerves. It’s anticipation.

He takes photos on his way over, to calm himself, and to have in case this is the beginning of a great story.

He comes close to the stairs leading up to where Eric will be and stops for a moment, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

He walks slowly up the stairs, craning his neck to see Eric.

He’s a few from the top when he spots him. He’s facing the other way, out to the carpark, bundled up and holding two take-away coffees.

Jack can’t help himself. He lifts his camera to his face, takes a sidestep for a better angle, then snaps a photo.

He moves to the step up, zooms in, and takes another.

Eric is gorgeous in the soft morning light, looking out hopefully, bottom lip caught by his teeth. Jack’s stomach flops. His heart races. His next photo blurs because he can’t steady his hands without breathing, which he stopped doing because Eric turned towards him, the shutter noise of the previous photo ringing out through the stillness of the morning.

Jack reminds himself to breath. In, out. In, out.

He lowers the camera slowly and watches Eric’s face.

Eric blinks twice quickly, and his mouth pops open just a fraction.

Jack waits. He knew who was going to be here. Eric didn’t.

Before Jack can get too nervous, Eric’s face splits into a wide grin.

“Jack,” Eric says, with what sounds to Jack’s ears like happiness.

“Hi, Eric.” He’s at the top of the staircase now but he goes no further, letting Eric decide what to do next.

Eric raises one of the coffees up and holds it out for Jack. Who is he to resist such a clear invitation?

Jack walks too quickly to pass himself off as calm or collected. Eric keeps smiling though, so it’s okay. The coffee is a few degrees away from being cool, and Jack wonders how long Eric has been out here, waiting for him, maybe just as hopeful and nervous.

“I have to confess,” Eric begins, twisting the lid of his coffee around. Jack holds his breath, ready for rejection. It doesn’t come. “I was hoping it was you. In fact, I was pretty sure it was. I just didn’t want to get my hopes up too much though, you know.”

“How did you know it was me?” Eric tilts his head, thinking. “Was it all the photos of Faber?”

Eric lightly slaps Jack’s arm and Jack smiles at the contact. “No, silly. It was—I was watching you present your assignment in class a few weeks ago, and it reminded me off all the photos that had been appearing in my locker. The same sense of life in them. I really admire that about your stuff, Jack. Your photos always feel so _alive_.”

Jack thinks it’s the nicest compliment he’s received his entire life. “Thank you, Eric.”

“Call me Bitty.”

“Bitty?”

“Yeah, it’s what people close to me call me. And I’d like you to be one of those people, Jack.”

“I’d like that too.” Jack smiles at Bitty, his nerves finally gone, and warmth bubbling up to replace it. “Bitty, then.”

“Well okay, now that that’s settled, it’s your turn, Jack.”

“For what?”

Bitty opens his messenger bag and pulls out a polaroid camera.

“ _Bitty_.” Jack immediately wants to turn away, and does so. He’s always preferred to be behind the camera.

“Hey, none of that now.” Bitty grabs his chin, gentle but Jack feels caught. He turns Jack so he’s facing Bitty. “That’s right. Three, two, one.”

Jack lifts one corner of his mouth upwards, just before Bitty takes the photo. The flash is blinding, brighter than the morning light. Jack blinks rapidly to clear his vision and Bitty laughs softly at him.

“The only downside to polaroids,” Bitty jokes.

“Sure it’s not the expensive film and outdated technology?” Jack chirps him.

“Hard to hate it when it brought you here.” It’s so sincere that Jack can’t help but lean forwards and press his lips to Bitty’s cheek.

The photo turns out well, even though Jack is slightly off-centre. He feels embarrassed by his smile because it’s far too fond.

He thinks Bitty must be able to see it, see how huge this thing is for Jack, even though it’s only just starting. Bitty traces his finger over Jack’s smile in the picture, then turns and traces them over in real life. Jack smiles against them and Bitty quickly drops his finger, and leans up to press their lips together.

“So, I was thinking…” Bitty begins, then trails off as he looks away at the rising sun.

Jack steps closer in. “Yes?”

Bitty takes a deep breath before turning to face Jack again. “Would you like to get breakfast with me?”

Jack pretends he has to think about it. Instead he thinks about how golden Bitty’s hair looks now that the sun’s out, how nice it is to be able to look at him for longer than two seconds, and how much Jack wants to hold him tight.

Jack settles for taking Bitty’s hand instead. “I would love that.”

Bitty sighs out in clear relief and squeezes Jack’s hand.

“Annie’s?”, Jack asks at the same time Bitty says, “Jerry’s?”

They laugh and then Bitty lifts Jack hand to kiss his knuckles.

“Jerry’s this time and Annie’s the next?” Jack suggests.

“Okay.” Bitty accepts.

“You’ll have to lead me. I don’t know where your place is.”

Bitty smiles at Jack and then starts off, pulling Jack along. Jack likes it, the feel of Bitty’s palm in his, and the idea of getting to know him a little better.

**Author's Note:**

> Story based on [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2993452003&feature=iv&src_vid=4UosBMadCk8&v=2OnyGDrYWfo)
> 
> Find this story on my [ tumblr](http://17piesinseptember.tumblr.com/)


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